CHEYENNE — By the end of this past week, the latest Laramie County Sheriff’s Office Truck Around and Find Out highway enforcement operation had nabbed 16 illegal truck drivers.
Then came No. 17.
That was an unlicensed driver on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) watch list who almost hit Chief Deputy Chance Walkama right outside the sheriff’s office — while distracted by his cellphone and driving the wrong way on a one-way street.
His shift was over Friday, and Walkama was at his vehicle parked outside the sheriff’s office on 20th Street, which is one-way westbound.
“When I looked up, here came this white Cavalier with the driver looking down on his phone,” Walkama told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “Then he looked up and saw me. He was coming down the wrong way on 20th.”
The irony of being the last driver rounded up right in front of his office wasn’t lost on Sheriff Brian Kozak.
“So, we were finishing up the operation on Friday; you know, wrapping it up, bringing it into the station, and guess what?” Kozak says in a video highlighting the latest Truck Around effort on his Facebook page.
“Right there in front of the sheriff’s office — we’re on a one-way street — and there is an unlicensed, undocumented operator going the wrong way on a one-way street,” the sheriff says. “Almost hit the deputy.
“So, that was our final arrest.”
This latest Truck Around and Find Out operation rounds out a year of the targeted highway safety efforts for the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.
Truck Around doesn’t focus solely on commercial trucks or target undocumented drivers, Kozak has said. However, they often are involved.
The last Truck Around push in July saw 10 illegal drivers arrested and turned over to ICE.
Including this past week’s 17 arrests, the first year of Truck Around has resulted in 136 illegal drivers arrested.
‘I Wouldn’t Recommend That’
Like a number of the other illegal drivers turned over to ICE this past week, the wrong-way driver “didn’t speak any English,” and had both an expired visa to be in the country and an expired Wyoming driver’s license.
“He was allowed to drive on that as long as his visa is (valid), but he had been expired for a few months,” Walkama said.
The man, Yatsen Perez-Ramos, originally from Cuba, “hit the trifecta” when ICE informed the sheriff’s office that he was on the agency’s watch list.
“When things like that happen, we just contact the local ICE and see if they want us to put a hold on the person or not,” Walkama said. “It was an interesting way to end the day.”
Driving illegally is never a good idea, he added, especially doing it right past the sheriff’s office.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said. “Or, doing that in front of the public safety building on 17th Street, which is the police department.”
Legal Truckers Get An Assist
Kozak also called out another encounter during the weeklong operation, and credited legal truck drivers for an assist.
While staking out a stop sign near the TA Travel Center truck stop east of Cheyenne along Interstate 80, a deputy approached the driver’s side of a semitrailer, he said.
What the deputy didn’t know at that time is that a passenger in the truck was in the country illegally, and decided to bail out of the cab and try to run away.
“You can’t see on the other side (from the driver’s side), and there was a passenger who got out and was trying to evade detection,” Kozak said. “But guess what?
“Those legal American truck drivers, they pointed out to the deputy where this guy was trying to evade detection,” he added. “And so, he was also taken into custody — also unlicensed, undocumented.”
The stop signs at the TA Travel Center have been an area of concern with local residents, so the sheriff’s office will stake them out sometimes, Walkama said.
Because it has a heavy amount of commercial truck traffic, those intersections can be dangerous if the heavy vehicles don’t stop fully.
“It’s a stop sign you can see from a mile away from almost every direction,” he said. “For years, we’ve heard from the community about needed enforcement in that area, and it’s in the rotation of places to focus on.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
